It didn't have to end this way

This week, close to 40 of my former colleagues were handed their termination notices.

40 or more others took a buyout in the weeks preceding the terminations. A similar number of support staff are losing their jobs. This follows a massive buyout of senior staff  two years ago when Alberta Distance Learning Centre restructured itself in a desperate bid to retain its longstanding government funding. 

All for nothing in this government's relentless quest to reduce services to Albertans.

For nearly a hundred years, Alberta Distance Learning Centre has provided educational opportunities to Alberta's kids. From its humble beginnings as a one woman show in the back room of the legislature to its heyday with more than 30,000 students in schools and homes all over the world, ADLC has changed and grown in its quest to meet the needs of kids from virtually every walk of life. From kids living on remote farms, to families who moved abroad for work, to kids with addictions, to kids staying home to care for disabled parents, to gifted kids looking for enrichment, to adult students who fell through the cracks when they were younger.  Kids with mobility issues and mental health issues and autoimmune disorders. Elite athletes and aspiring entrepreneurs. Students in small schools that cannot offer a full range of programming. Students wanting to learn another language or explore areas of interest such as Aboriginal Studies or forestry. Students who lost every worldly good due to fire and flood. Students from large schools who don't fit it. From First Nations to recent immigrants. Christians and Muslims and those whose life experiences have left them with nothing to believe in. Teachers in outreach centres and private schools. And most recently, teachers and students who work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

All of these-thousands of people-were able to use ADLC to teach and learn.

All were welcome. 

"Success for every student" was not just a motto. It was something we believed in and worked to achieve.

Through the decades, ADLC teachers experimented with all kinds of technology to engage kids. Lessons delivered via CKUA radio. Television programming through the now-defunct ACCESS TV. Telephone conferencing. Online learning. Interactive virtual labs. Personalized instruction. Video conferencing. Forestry and rig simulators. ADLC and its programming was recognized throughout the world. 

I spent 20 years trying to make course content come alive for thousands of kids. So did dozens of my colleagues who created and revised hundreds of courses at all grade levels. I don't know what will happen to the resources we so painstakingly created and left to others to tend. Left to a faceless bureaucrat to maintain until they wither and die from neglect, I imagine.

As the threats to defund escalated, the restructuring began. Teachers who previously worked in communities across the province were brought back to the mothership in Barrhead, transferred or offered buyouts, removing almost all institutional memory from the school. Regional offices closed. The time-tested, flexible and cost-effective marker model was eliminated. Services to adults were withdrawn. Summer school opportunities were reduced and then eliminated. It's not what I would have done. But it wasn't up to me. 

When the announcement that funding would be phased out, rather than face death through a thousand cuts, ADLC decided it would close early, rather than try to do the impossible. It will close its doors for good in June 2021.

It is hard to know who to blame for this travesty. Certainly the government must accept the lion's share of the blame. But Alberta Education began the defunding process long before the UCP was elected.  

Large boards like Calgary Public and Edmonton Public, with their own distributed learning platforms have long resented what they perceived as an unfair funding formula that favoured ADLC - despite the fact that  they themselves benefitted from its province-wide mandate. They lobbied for funding to end. Ironically, thousands of students and families from Alberta's two largest cities make up the bulk of students at ADLC and its sister school, Vista Virtual. Make of that what you will.

Sadly, more than 60% of Alberta's superintendents said they did not need ADLC. Apparently the thousands of students from their schools who use ADLC can receive instruction at the hands of their own already overtaxed teachers who will now be expected to create their own materials and complete their own assessments. Or perhaps their schools can buy courses from Pearson or another corporation with a for-profit motive. Or maybe those students just will not have their needs met. Superintendents can take some responsibility as well.

Did local officials fight hard enough to retain this valuable resource? I don't know what they did or didn't do. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough.

Maybe it doesn't matter who is to blame.  Alberta's students will suffer. 

And that makes my heart hurt.

I will honour the rich history and dedication of those who built Alberta Distance Learning Centre. Not only for their expertise, dedication, creativity, and vision but also for their very real love for their students. Alberta has lost a vital resource. 

It did not have to end this way.

Consent of the Governed

I stand at my window.

Bright snow on the distant mountaintops.

Clouds drift up the valley from the south.

Not long ago, that same sky was filled with the purple orange smoke of a wildfire just kilometers away. The fire went from out of control, to being held, to extinguished, due to the hard work of over a thousand firefighters, supported by heavy machine operators and water bombers.

As the sun creeps along the horizon, the frost on the metal rooftops dissipates. All around me, houses of stucco and concrete. Yards immaculately firesmarted. The community takes the wildfire threat seriously.

I gaze out over lovely yards, through which bears and deer roam freely. The fall was busy as they forage for fruit. Sometimes they walk right through our yard.  The regional district and the local community organization keep us updated with bear sightings. Just today, I read that a large grizzly boar is roaming the river bottom to the north. We and our neighbours try to live in harmony with these creatures. If someone pulls out a gun, it's to scare them away- not kill them.

The  newsletter from the regional district informs me that there are 4 new covid-19 cases in the valley, bringing the total since the beginning of the pandemic to 43.  Recently returned from an overseas trip, we are on day 7 of quarantine. We hope we do not add to the statistics and we report daily on the ArriveCan app that we still have no symptoms.

Almost within earshot is the lovely Coldspring Creek which burbles happily down to the river. In spring however, the creek turns to a torrent, washing debris downstream and risking property damage. The regional district recently commissioned a study which recommends a mitigation project that will soon be underway.

Much further to the south, summer wildfires devastated parts of the country. 46 people died. The president blamed government agencies for mismanagement of forests. 

Yesterday, there were over 1200 covid deaths in the U.S., bringing their death total to over 238,000 human lives since March. There were 53 in my own country- a total of just over 10,000. The U.S. has had 723 covid deaths per per million, while Canada has 273. Instead of listening to science, hundreds of thousands of citizens in the U.S. pretend that wearing a mask and avoiding large gatherings is a some kind of affront to their liberties. When it comes to "Give me liberty or give me death," it appears they have chosen death. A decision that mystifies me and most of my fellow Canadians, who have consented to respect the advice of government and the science on which they rely.

The US election is still not settled, with the sitting president tweeting that elections workers should stop counting votes. Armed, unmasked supporters surround voting stations and threaten elections workers. The National Guard is standing by. The rest of the world holds its breath.

And I wonder how it is that in my nation, the vast majority of citizens believe that the government is not the enemy. We may not always like the political party that was elected, but we recognize the right of the majority to form government. The vast majority believe in working together to keep each other safe and prosperous. That is how democracy is supposed to work.

Aunt Nin and her quilt

This is my great great aunt, Jane McNaught. 

She was born in the mid 1800s and grew up on the family farm near Glen Morris, Ontario. She was the eldest of four children. She had three brothers- Charles, Robert-who was killed by a run-away cart,-and Samuel. Sam and his family moved to the Peace Country, followed in 1911 by my great grandfather Charles, my great grandmother Eliza, and some of their children, travelling by rail and then ox cart to their homestead near Beaverlodge. Aunt Nin, as she was known to my mom and aunt, followed in 1913 accompanied by a couple of my great aunts who were teenagers at the time.

I don't know much about my great great aunt except that she never married, was exceptionally talented at needlecraft and had a resourceful, pioneering spirit.  She knew her new home would not be as established as the Ontario farm where she had always lived, so she brought with her a platform rocker so she would be comfortable on uneven floors.  It sits in my living room today, and despite its rather delicate proportions, is a sturdy item that can seat a grown man comfortably.

Aunt Nin's most famous creation was a crazy quilt she spent years making by hand. She took leftover pieces of brocade, taffeta, velvet, and silk and sewed them together imaginatively, embroidering delicate designs freehand on the plainer bits. Each piece was joined with colourful embroidered stitches, no two alike. The date she started -March 1887-and the date she finished-March 1893- can be found stitched into the quilt. The back is hand-stitched to the backing cloth in stitches so neat, even and tiny, one would think it was made by a machine. 

When Aunt Nin died, my grandmother-her namesake- inherited the quilt. When I was a kid, sometimes Gramain would take it out of the cabinet at the top of the stairs and show it to me and my cousins. We admired the handiwork. The bits of painted silk that had begun to rot. The little pictures this unknown aunt had stitched into the cloth. And, then the quilt went back into storage, too delicate to grace a bed. Too precious to be put to use. When my grandmother died, I inherited the quilt. I stored it in a special case, looking at it from time to time.

It took Aunt Nin 6 years to make her quilt, but for well over a hundred years, it has been hidden from view. One day it will be nothing but scraps of cloth. Who will have seen it? Who will have appreciated the skill and creativity and the hours that went into its creation? Who will be there to speculate on the character of the woman who created it? To wonder what Aunt Nin was thinking of during the hours and days and years she toiled over this crazy quilt. Did she remember the parties and events each scrap of cloth represented? Did it fill her with the memories of younger days? Perhaps she imagined it would one day sit on her own bed in her own house. Perhaps she thought about how it would be passed down through the generations. Or perhaps it was just the result of a low cost hobby that helped her while away the time as she watched her brothers marry and settle down and raise their own children as she, the spinster aunt, aged.

Aunt Nin was 41 years old when she started her quilt and 47 when she stitched the date signifying its completion. She was 67 whe she packed up her platform rocker and her quilt and her nieces and moved from the only home she had ever knew to a pioneer shack in the bush of northern Alberta. By the time she left Ontario, she must have known that quilt would never grace a bed in her own home. But it would always be a kaleidoscope of memories, pieced together one bit at a time. It was the work of her own hand, something to comfort her as she lived out the rest of her days in her brother's house. 

We moved this summer. Starting a new life in a new house in a new province, I think about those who went before. Those who took a chance. Those who laboured to create a life in a new place. Those, like Aunt Nin, who made the most of what life offered.

Aunt Nin's quilt now hangs on a wall in my house.

When I look at it, I think about those who make the best of their circumstances. Those who take the scraps of what could be a drab and humdrum existence and make it into something beautiful.